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I'm completely underwhelmed by all the iPhone Loopt bashing. A slew of people have reported accidentally spamming their friends, but nobody has been able to de

by boucher 18y ago

I'm completely underwhelmed by all the iPhone Loopt bashing. A slew of people have reported accidentally spamming their friends, but nobody has been able to describe what happened. When I used the Loopt iPhone app, it was pretty obvious what was going on to me. You have to actually tap on the names of people whom you want to invite. Now, if there is some bug that's causing invites to be sent to more than the individuals you tap, that should be addressed, but its probably nothing more than a bug. Merlin Mann hasn't even tried the Loopt app, but has no problem arguing about its supposed privacy violations. If anyone has more information, or can actually describe the problem people are supposedly having, I'd be interested to hear it.

KirinDave 18y ago
I've been using it, and it was fairly obvious to me exactly what I was signing up for. I actually bothered to skim the "Privacy" section of the license and said, "Oh, that's how Loopt plans to make money, by sending me SMSs with advertisements. That's predictable. I think what's happening is that people are conflating Loopt's "We will share your phone number and location with our advertisers if we so decide" with their invite system, and getting into an uproar as a result.
- mechanical_fish 18y ago
  Top Ten List of Coder Excuses for Bad UI Design: 1. I understand the UI perfectly. The users must be stupid. 2. It's all spelled out perfectly clearly on page three of the license agreement. ... Let me add one: 3. You have no privacy anyway; get over it. Anybody else want to add one? I'm still a bit short of ten, here. I note, with approval, that the Loopt folks were smart enough not to make excuses but to fall immediately into the Apologizer role: http://loopt.typepad.com/loopt/2008/07/iphone-invite-c.html http://loopt.typepad.com/loopt/2008/07/iphone-invite-c.html ... which, if we carefully parse Loopt's own description of the problem, seems to be entirely warranted: When you clicked the “Who’s on Loopt” button, all of your contacts that are current Loopt users were auto-selected to receive invites. A total count of people receiving invites appeared at the bottom of the screen. However, we have since disabled that functionality due to customer feedback and confusion. We are working on an improved invite flow that will include an invite confirmation screen that will be released very soon. "...will include an invite confirmation screen". Uh, yep, that could be the problem! It would be nice to provide more detailed bug reports, but it seems that we can't because Loopt treated this as an emergency and updated the app right away. Which was also very smart.
  - KirinDave 18y ago
    All I'm saying is that if you're the kind of person who is irrevocably damaged by sending an SMS to someone, then these sorts of social networks shouldn't have been on your slate to begin with. Also, it seems weird to me that people are worried their number may reach advertisers. Unless you're extremely selective about who you call and you pay your carrier extra, your number will end up in the advertiser's hands. Odds are even if your number is "unlisted" you've been redflagged by someone that your credit card weaseled their way into selling. If we're going to complain about privacy in this modern phone-bound world, let's at least complain about the phenomenon and not specific expressions thereof. Loopt is just a scapegoat for the reactionary stance of people who are being suddenly immersed into the modern world of cellphone ownership.
    - natrius 18y ago
      "All I'm saying is that if you're the kind of person who is irrevocably damaged by sending an SMS to someone, then these sorts of social networks shouldn't have been on your slate to begin with." And what we're saying is that you're wrong. I wouldn't be "irrevocably damaged" by what Loopt did, but I'd be pissed off. No one wants to be That Guy who spams people with invites to random services or Facebook app notifications. I hate That Guy.
    - mechanical_fish 18y ago
      Loopt is just a scapegoat for the reactionary stance of people who are being suddenly immersed into the modern world of cellphone ownership. What, reactionaries like Justine Ezarik? http://blogs.business2.com/apple/2007/08/video-ijustine-.html http://blogs.business2.com/apple/2007/08/video-ijustine-.htm... http://www.technologyevangelist.com/2007/07/ijustines_lifecastin_2.html http://www.technologyevangelist.com/2007/07/ijustines_lifeca... Pull the other one. And we have another entry for the list: 4. We shouldn't try to fix this problem, because it's just a specific instance of a much more general problem that we also shouldn't try to fix. --- I do kind of agree with this: if you're the kind of person who is irrevocably damaged by sending an SMS to someone, then these sorts of social networks shouldn't have been on your slate to begin with Absolutely: Social networks that don't give you firm and clear control over who gets contacted are going to make this class of people flee in panic. The question is: How large is this class of people? It's probably larger than you think. For example, ask any woman who, like Justine, is justifiably afraid of being stalked. I'm afraid that such women are not very hard to find.
icey 18y ago
I can tell you that until there are zero reports of these sorts of problems, there is absolutely no way I can even try this application out. I'm glad that people are piling on about it, because I have a big fat phone book full of people that I only call after I can prepare for 30 minutes before hand, and the thought of even accidentally sending them a text like this gives me the chills. Like, if I'm plumbing my contact list to try to get a one in a million favor type of contacts. It would be disastrous to spam these contacts with my phone number and an invitation to something stupid like Loopt. What a great way for me to tell these guys "hey, look at me! I'm some douche with an iPhone, here to spam you! Please, never let me call in a favor again!" I already catch enough hell for using an iPhone instead of a Blackberry like most of corporate america and the military sector.
- KirinDave 18y ago
  There is pretty much no chance of accidentally sending your contacts SMS so long as you don't go clicking willy-nilly. You have to explicitly click someone's name and odds are your colleagues aren't on a supported network anyways. So really, this is all FUD from the trailing edge of the mac world. And I know the kind of social pressure you're describing, I worked with LMCO for quite awhile, so I don't meant to sound dismissive of your concern. But really, Loopt, Whrrl and Zintin don't send SMSs to people without asking your first. And it sounds like you can safely pass on them anyways, because you're probably not in the target demographic for these products.
  - jfornear 18y ago
    Example: I tried to invite a friend and it didn't even work. She was sitting right next to me.
mlinsey 18y ago
I knew that it was going to send a message to my friends, but there wasn't much in the way of visual feedback telling me that the requests had been made, so I had thought that the request just didn't go through and accidentally sent 2-3 messages to each person.

by boucher 18y ago

KirinDave 18y ago

I've been using it, and it was fairly obvious to me exactly what I was signing up for. I actually bothered to skim the "Privacy" section of the license and said, "Oh, that's how Loopt plans to make money, by sending me SMSs with advertisements. That's predictable. I think what's happening is that people are conflating Loopt's "We will share your phone number and location with our advertisers if we so decide" with their invite system, and getting into an uproar as a result.

mechanical_fish 18y ago
Top Ten List of Coder Excuses for Bad UI Design: 1. I understand the UI perfectly. The users must be stupid. 2. It's all spelled out perfectly clearly on page three of the license agreement. ... Let me add one: 3. You have no privacy anyway; get over it. Anybody else want to add one? I'm still a bit short of ten, here. I note, with approval, that the Loopt folks were smart enough not to make excuses but to fall immediately into the Apologizer role: http://loopt.typepad.com/loopt/2008/07/iphone-invite-c.html http://loopt.typepad.com/loopt/2008/07/iphone-invite-c.html ... which, if we carefully parse Loopt's own description of the problem, seems to be entirely warranted: When you clicked the “Who’s on Loopt” button, all of your contacts that are current Loopt users were auto-selected to receive invites. A total count of people receiving invites appeared at the bottom of the screen. However, we have since disabled that functionality due to customer feedback and confusion. We are working on an improved invite flow that will include an invite confirmation screen that will be released very soon. "...will include an invite confirmation screen". Uh, yep, that could be the problem! It would be nice to provide more detailed bug reports, but it seems that we can't because Loopt treated this as an emergency and updated the app right away. Which was also very smart.
- KirinDave 18y ago
  All I'm saying is that if you're the kind of person who is irrevocably damaged by sending an SMS to someone, then these sorts of social networks shouldn't have been on your slate to begin with. Also, it seems weird to me that people are worried their number may reach advertisers. Unless you're extremely selective about who you call and you pay your carrier extra, your number will end up in the advertiser's hands. Odds are even if your number is "unlisted" you've been redflagged by someone that your credit card weaseled their way into selling. If we're going to complain about privacy in this modern phone-bound world, let's at least complain about the phenomenon and not specific expressions thereof. Loopt is just a scapegoat for the reactionary stance of people who are being suddenly immersed into the modern world of cellphone ownership.
  - natrius 18y ago
    "All I'm saying is that if you're the kind of person who is irrevocably damaged by sending an SMS to someone, then these sorts of social networks shouldn't have been on your slate to begin with." And what we're saying is that you're wrong. I wouldn't be "irrevocably damaged" by what Loopt did, but I'd be pissed off. No one wants to be That Guy who spams people with invites to random services or Facebook app notifications. I hate That Guy.
  - mechanical_fish 18y ago
    Loopt is just a scapegoat for the reactionary stance of people who are being suddenly immersed into the modern world of cellphone ownership. What, reactionaries like Justine Ezarik? http://blogs.business2.com/apple/2007/08/video-ijustine-.html http://blogs.business2.com/apple/2007/08/video-ijustine-.htm... http://www.technologyevangelist.com/2007/07/ijustines_lifecastin_2.html http://www.technologyevangelist.com/2007/07/ijustines_lifeca... Pull the other one. And we have another entry for the list: 4. We shouldn't try to fix this problem, because it's just a specific instance of a much more general problem that we also shouldn't try to fix. --- I do kind of agree with this: if you're the kind of person who is irrevocably damaged by sending an SMS to someone, then these sorts of social networks shouldn't have been on your slate to begin with Absolutely: Social networks that don't give you firm and clear control over who gets contacted are going to make this class of people flee in panic. The question is: How large is this class of people? It's probably larger than you think. For example, ask any woman who, like Justine, is justifiably afraid of being stalked. I'm afraid that such women are not very hard to find.

icey 18y ago

I can tell you that until there are zero reports of these sorts of problems, there is absolutely no way I can even try this application out. I'm glad that people are piling on about it, because I have a big fat phone book full of people that I only call after I can prepare for 30 minutes before hand, and the thought of even accidentally sending them a text like this gives me the chills. Like, if I'm plumbing my contact list to try to get a one in a million favor type of contacts. It would be disastrous to spam these contacts with my phone number and an invitation to something stupid like Loopt. What a great way for me to tell these guys "hey, look at me! I'm some douche with an iPhone, here to spam you! Please, never let me call in a favor again!" I already catch enough hell for using an iPhone instead of a Blackberry like most of corporate america and the military sector.

KirinDave 18y ago
There is pretty much no chance of accidentally sending your contacts SMS so long as you don't go clicking willy-nilly. You have to explicitly click someone's name and odds are your colleagues aren't on a supported network anyways. So really, this is all FUD from the trailing edge of the mac world. And I know the kind of social pressure you're describing, I worked with LMCO for quite awhile, so I don't meant to sound dismissive of your concern. But really, Loopt, Whrrl and Zintin don't send SMSs to people without asking your first. And it sounds like you can safely pass on them anyways, because you're probably not in the target demographic for these products.
- jfornear 18y ago
  Example: I tried to invite a friend and it didn't even work. She was sitting right next to me.

mlinsey 18y ago

I knew that it was going to send a message to my friends, but there wasn't much in the way of visual feedback telling me that the requests had been made, so I had thought that the request just didn't go through and accidentally sent 2-3 messages to each person.